Sunday, 13 August 2017

#5STARTBRPREDICTIONS

The hashtag #5startbrpredictions was introduced by British BookTuber Mercedes Mills from MercysBookishMusings (which is the name of her YouTube channel).

The logic behind this hashtag is pretty simple. You chose a couple of books from your TBR list you expect to rate with 5 stars, then actually read them and see whether your predictions were right or wrong. When well read Mercedes did this for the first time, she was wrong about all of her selected books except for one. So don't worry about failing, because this is a great chance to refine your choices next time ;)

And now, let's turn to my own TBR pile of 5 star predictions.

Well, to a true bookworm this may seem like an outright cheating to create a pile of 5 star predictions out of the most hipped books there are. But let me explain.

To tell the truth, I am rather slow reader and as a graduate of Political Science I often prefer to read non-fiction about issues that interest me than mainstream fiction. Even in this pile there are two non-fiction books. That's also why I am rather behind with contemporary fiction everyone's raving about, though, I'd love to read more of it.

The second reason is perhaps well known to every bookworm that even the most praised book could fail to meet your specific tastes.

So lets start with the list of my 5 star TBR predictions one by one.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is a Young Adult novel. I used to read YA even well late into my twenties but last couple of years I started to be interested in lesser and lesser number of books from this genre. However, The Hate U Give sounds different. It is part of the Black Lives Matter movement and it features a black teenage girl called Starr who becomes witness to her friend being shot by a policeman.

My second 5 star prediction is a book by a journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Applebaum: Iron Curtain - The Crushing of Eastern Europe. Although I haven't read any book by Anne Applebaum yet, I've read some of her interviews and her apt and brave tweets are one of my most favorite. She lives in Poland and is married to former Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski. Iron Curtain tells history of my home country as well.

I didn't feel interested in reading The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry at first. But after hearing praises for it by Mercedes herself and other two of my favorite BookTubers, Simon Savidge from SavidgeReads and Alice Lippart from The Book Castle, I've decided to include it into my TBR list. Though now, my expectations are pretty high. Hence it is rightfully part of my 5 star predictions pile.

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber has with no doubt one of the most stunning covers among the books in my library. When I saw this paperback published by Canongate in a local bookshop for the first time, it was accompanied with a matching paperback featuring a guy instead of a girl on it's cover. And I fell in love with it. I've decided to purchase The Book of Strange New Things partly due to it's cover but partly due to it's sci-fi/melancholic/deep-cutting story. This strange combination leads to my 5 star expectations.

Basically, I don't think there could be any other than 5 star rating of a book written upon life-threatening testimonies of a man who lived under atrocious rule of the so called Islamic State in Raqqa. Moreover, The Raqqa Diaries: Escape from 'Islamic State' has been endowed with street art illustrations, which make it more accessible for a contemporary reader.

Look at that stunning cover picture of Saint Malo, town on the northwest coast of France. For me, as a graduate of Political Science and EU-studies enthusiast, Saint Malo reminds me first of all of the launch of the European Security and Defense Policy in 1999, an inconceivable happening during the World War II, during which the story of All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr takes place. I expect this Pulitzer Prize-winning book being a gripping story reminding us of living during the darkest times of our history.

So these are the 6 books I expect to rate with 5 stars on Goodreads. I don't plan to read them straight away so please expect an extended period until I will be able to come back with wrap-up of this interesting challenge. Although, after finishing this post I am even more eager to start to read them as soon as possible ;)